


not just a river in egypt

by featherxquill



Category: The Infinite Bad (Podcast)
Genre: Dogs, Families of Choice, Fluff, Future Fic, Gen, background Joy/Dorothy, blatant denial, cornelia hasn't lived quite this long but I promise it's not angsty, in before canon actally kills anyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 11:11:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16094483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherxquill/pseuds/featherxquill
Summary: Spring, 1965. They're old. There is a dog. Come with me and you'll be in a world of blatant fun denial!





	not just a river in egypt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lothiriel84](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lothiriel84/gifts).



Sunlight; an impression of morning. Sebastian St. Battenberg stirs, stretches and wakes. It is the spring of 1965, and he feels a cool morning draft against his old toes as he swings his legs out of bed, which he immediately counteracts by warming his feet against the flank of the dog sleeping on his rug.

The husky stirs and protests vocally, then opens her eyes and sees him, responding immediately with a thumping tail. He stands, stretching, and she does too, although she arches her back far more nimbly than he is capable of. As he dresses, she fetches his boots, watching him with growing impatience as he has to seat himself on the edge of his bed to pull them on, then shuffle over to a nearby chair to fasten the laces, which always take him a little while these days.

“Roo,” she says, which he takes to mean _hurry up._

“I’m doing my best,” he tells her.

When he moves towards the kitchen, she dances around him, all eager delight. He drops his hand and she allows a scratch between the ears, but as soon as they emerge into the house proper she runs for the door, then circles back to peer at him quizzically when he doesn’t follow.

“W-roo?” she asks him.

“Coat, scarf, hat, pipe,” he tells her, still working on the first. “You know this.”

“Mmr,” she answers, sitting back on her haunches with the canine equivalent of a sigh.

He buttons himself into his coat, wraps his scarf around his neck and pulls his flat cap on. His pipe, he retrieves from the table by his chair, and he pats his coat pocket to check that his tobacco is inside.

“All right, Cavendish,” he says, turning to face her, “let’s go for a walk.”

“Woo!” she cries, and bolts out the door as soon as he opens it.

He emerges more slowly into the crisp morning air, boots crunching the frost that still tips the grass. The day is fine, bright and still, silence broken only by Cavendish as she barrels across the field, barking and sending a cluster of birds leaping into the sky.

Sebastian smiles and shakes his head. She is the first dog he has ever owned that he has not named after himself - it had felt right to break his streak last year, when she was born only a week after his old friend passed away. Cornelia had stayed put for an impressive 104 years, only deigning to depart this mortal plane after travelling to another thirteen countries, outliving a second, much better husband, and imparting her wisdom to the two grandchildren who had come to her almost as unconventionally as Joy had. And so when the puppy had come along so serendipitously - the descendants of the original Antarctic pack were spread far and wide by now, though not so far or wide that their owners would not occasionally call Sebastian and offer him a puppy - he thought it only right to name the animal in his friend’s honour.

It’s certainly different. It may be a trick of the imagination, or perhaps it's just that the dog is so young and he is now so old, but she certainly seems to have an energy that none of his Sebastians ever had - frantic and boundless and more than capable of vexing him beyond belief. Given how in touch his friend had been with the world of spirits, it’s not hard to imagine her occasionally visiting and inhabiting her namesake, particularly given the dog’s intermittent refusal to obey commands. Sebastian can’t imagine Cornelia accepting _heel, Cavendish_ on any plane of existence.

Reaching the fallen tree near the edge of his property, Sebastian seats himself on the thick log and takes his pipe from his pocket, packing it as he watches Cavendish attempt to dig out what is probably a rabbit hole. He lights his pipe, taking the first few puffs of the day while enjoying the sun on his back, then whistles to call the dog over.

“Where’s your stick?” he asks her, when she comes, nose covered in dirt. “Find a stick!”

“Bff!” she answers, and runs off again.

He rises as she forages in the tree line, wandering back down towards the drive and heading for the mailbox, leaving a trail of pipe smoke in his wake. He watches her head bob as she returns to him, lopsided now with the stick hanging out one side of her mouth.

“Good girl,” he tells her, as she drops it at his feet. “Well chosen.” He picks it up and lobs it as far as he can, which is not as far as he once could have, but is still a respectable distance. She shoots off after it.

When he reaches the mailbox, he finds a letter inside that is not for him, as well as the paper, which is. He glances at the headlines before he tucks it in his coat, and notices the date: April 12th. Cavendish returns with a fluffy swish of tail, and for a moment the present merges oddly with the past. Sebastian remembers waking to that view: a swish of brown and white against an icy blue sky, hazy sunlight and an ethereal glow. He remembers being convinced that he was flying, that he was dead, that the burning in his chest was the light of God.

But it wasn’t. The burning was Dorothy’s hasty patch-up job, sealing the bullet in his chest where it would remain for the next twenty years. The sunlight had been hazy because his eyelashes were tipped with snow, and the flying was the dogsled as it ferried him to safety. He remembers his head in Joy’s lap, Dorothy’s confident fingers checking on him, Cornelia surreptitiously squeezing his hand. Together they’d carried him home, thirty-six years ago to the day.

Cavendish whines, and the present returns. Sebastian feels the phantom pain in his chest, but it eases when the dog nudges her stick into his leg, when he focuses, takes it, draws his arm back and throws it again. His arm still works; his chest is intact. He feels rattled even as the memory fades, though, reaches up to touch the envelope in his pocket.

The girls usually collect their mail. This morning, he thinks he’ll deliver.

They bought the property together, all four of them, in the months after their return from Antarctica. Cornelia had spent so much of her fortune outfitting the ship for their journey that her future was no longer secure, so she sold her property in Kensington with a view to moving out of the city. Sebastian decided to join her. He had never liked living in London, but he knew how to manage a country estate, so had offered to go in with her on a property that could house the pack of dogs he’d brought home, one that would be large enough to provide an income and give them each their own space. She agreed, and Joy was naturally included - she didn’t have much to contribute financially at the time, but she did have an offer of work from Oxford University, so they focused their search on the surrounding area and eventually found a property with an old farmhouse on the edge of Buckinghamshire. Dorothy decided to contribute and stay, too - Sebastian and Cornelia wouldn’t comprehend the extent of it until sometime later, but they knew that she didn’t want to leave Joy.

Sebastian heads for the big house now. He throws the stick for Cavendish again, and she chases it, but once she realises the direction he’s headed in, she abandons their game of fetch in favour of racing ahead, barking out an enthusiastic greeting to announce his approach.

The farmhouse has been home to various configurations of their unusual family, over the years. Originally, the three women lived there together and Sebastian took the gatehouse cottage, but he also took on converting some former outbuildings into a second, larger cottage as a project. Around the time he completed that, Cornelia remarried, and Dorothy and Joy - by then quite clearly living together as companions - moved into it, giving both couples their space. Sebastian looked after the large cottage himself for a few years, when Dorothy’s father’s ailing health had seen her and Joy spend a few years in America, but he moved back to the smaller cottage when they returned from their travels with a daughter in tow. She was biologically Dorothy’s, but she called Dorothy ‘Mom’ and Joy ‘Mum’ and Cornelia ‘Grandma’, and no one asked any questions. Eventually, the larger family moved into the big house, swapping with Cornelia and her husband. It turned out to be a good idea, because their family expanded again during the war, when Joy insisted on taking on a boy who’d been evacuated from a London orphanage. She never sent him back, and soon enough he had a sister and two mothers, a pair of grandparents and an uncle, with only one blood tie between them but plenty of love to go round, and many strange hobbies to acquire.

They’ve had a good life, Sebastian thinks, lifting his hand to wave hello as Cavendish scratches at the door of the big house and Joy emerges to greet her.

“She might be possessed by your mother this morning!” he calls as he approaches.

“Not today, I don’t think,” Joy replies, catching the dog as she tries to jump up and sidestepping her dirty paws. “ _Down, girl._ ” Cavendish obeys, and Joy grins at him. “See? Not nearly obstinate enough.”

Sebastian laughs. “Fair.” He slips his hand into his jacket pocket and pulls out the envelope. “Brought you a letter,” he says, holding it out to her.

Joy’s smile turns soft. “You didn’t have to do that,” she says. “I would have popped over later.”

“I know,” Sebastian replies, "but I might have noticed that it’s postmarked from Australia.” It’s where their daughter, Ruby, is - an in-memory of her own, visiting the only continent her grandmother never made it to.

It’s strange, realising that Joy’s daughter is now almost the age that she was when they travelled to Antarctica. It makes Sebastian feel very old indeed to see grey in Joy’s hair and glasses on her nose, and realise that she is herself now older than Cornelia was when they went to Egypt. He is a very old man, and he’s seen his fair share of horror, but, he thinks, feeling the paper bump up against the old scar on his chest and imagining the date emblazoned on it, he’s glad he was able to stick around for the good bits as well.

“Why don’t you come in?” Joy asks. “Dorothy’s making breakfast. We can dig out a bone for Cav to gnaw on, and then maybe we can read the letter together.”

Sebastian smiles. “All right, if you're going to twist my arm."

He scrapes his boots, taps out his pipe, and follows Joy inside towards the smell of bacon.

-


End file.
